Edison May Solve the Problem

Key to the Completely Successful Automobile Lies in the Storage Battery

Buffalo Evening News
April 6, 1901

If it is a fact that the inventive genius of Edison is about to become an important factor in the development of the automobile it undoubtedly portends a complete revolution in an industry that has already reached astonishing proportions.

Ever since Mr. Edison perfected his system of sextuplex telegraphy his contribution to electrical mechanics has been continuous and occasionally amazing. Everything he has touched since he revolutionized the Morse system of telegraphy has yieled results that have facilitated the operations of mankind in some important department of productive activity. At the same time he has enriched physical science with many important discoveries, and these discoveries have been taken up by other electricians and inventors and applied in the devleopment of new forms of mechanical energy.

There are a good many reasons for hoping that the genius of this electrical wizard has come to the aid of the automobile. In the first place, there is general agreement among scientists that the perfect automobile would be an electromobile. The various devices for propelling carriages by steam, gasoline and compressed air by contrast seem like temporary makeshifts.

Another reason for hoping that the development of the automobile is to receive the benefit of a practical storage battery is the universal belief that the self-propelling carriage is to be the final solution to street-paving and good roads problems in this country. But the public is in a hesitant attitude regarding the automobile. There is an impression that the practical locomobile, adaptable to all purposes, has not been perfected. When it is perfected, it cannot fail to work a transformation in the systems of street paving in our cities and in the construction of rural highways.

The key to the automobile development of the future is the small, compact, powerful and permanent storage battery. If Mr. Edison has invented it, he has solved the locomobile problem.

Chicago Record-Harold